Master Your Prose Fiction with Ian Nettleton (10-week course)

Week one 

What do you want to achieve? Setting goals for the next ten weeks and beyond. Treating writing seriously/as a job. Writing an author biography. ‘The qualities we appreciate in a character are not the same as those we would look for in a college roommate’ – Margaret Atwood. The complexity of character and the anti-hero.

Week two 

Surprising the reader and the character/avoiding the predictable. How do we plot? Is it important to plan the story? Does it stifle creativity? Knowing your world and bringing your own values and passions to the story.

Week three 

How are your objectives going? The magic only works once – how do you approach the creation of something new? What are we looking for as writers? Should we just write our way in? Read material that inspires us? What is your story about? How do other writers write? Digging deep – using emotional material in fiction: a rolling exercise part one.

Week four 

More on the emotional story/the subplot/rolling exercise part two. Group workshop. Is there a theme to your story? Where to enter the story. The use of symbolism.

Week five

Plot, character and true character: how a plot should bring out the true nature of your character. ‘Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write’ – Annie Proulx. Readings of work that inspires us and discussion of why, and a look at writing that doesn’t work and what we can learn from this.

No class – half term

Week six 

Everything must serve the story. Flash fiction: what it is and how to write it. Creating and editing a piece of flash fiction, using images/unusual stories from the newspapers. Class workshop and discussion.

Week seven 

Pacing your scenes: How to read the text as a whole and pace it just right, compressing here, extending there, and setting one scene against another so that the narrative has the necessary changes in tone and tension. Using a section from The Reader, we look at how the writer accelerates where necessary and slows time when we need to be immersed in a moment. The one-sentence pitch.

Week eight

The longer pitch/summary: writing a one-page summary that will attract the attention of a literary agent. Workshopping part one.

Week nine 

Workshopping part two and class discussion.

Week ten (6.30pm – 9.30pm)

Workshopping part three. What next? A discussion of what to do next with your writing, from setting goals and routines to other courses, as well as competitions, agents and publishers.

How it works

• No more than 15 students per course to maximise interaction with your tutor and coursemates
• Live classes led by an experienced tutor, whether online or in person
• Classes include discussion and writing exercises, along with one workshopping session for each student, in which you’ll receive detailed feedback on your work
• Course materials and notes that you can access 24/7 during the course, and for 1 year after the end of the course

This advanced course is suitable for writers who have been writing for some time and are ready to challenge themselves to complete a longer fiction project. You will have taken part in previous creative writing courses, groups or workshops and have experience of workshopping your and others’ work. You will have a confident grasp of the elements of writing fiction and have completed several shorter pieces of work – you might even have had some published in magazines or similar outlets. The course will give you a fresh look at the fundamental elements of fiction and help you develop bold and creative ways to deploy these in your writing. You will also work on the skills needed to sustain and complete a longer piece of work such as a novel or collection of short stories.

Course materials and notes for each week will be accessible 24/7 during the course, and for one year after the end of the course.